Salzburg, 14 (2). V. 95.

Taking advantage of a two-hour stop in a small Austrian town (already* not far from my destination), I am fulfilling my promise to write from the road.11

I have already been traveling "abroad" for the second day and practicing the language: I have turned out to be completely weak at it, I understand Germans with the greatest difficulty, or rather, I don't understand them at all**. I accost the conductor with some question or other, — he answers; I don't understand. He repeats more loudly. I still don't understand, and he gets angry and leaves. Despite such a shameful fiasco, my spirits do not fall and I am applying myself rather diligently to mangling the German language.

Regards to all of ours.

Your V. Ulyanov

I shall probably not be able to write the next letter very soon.

in the journal

* a day and a bit.

** I don't understand even the simplest words, — their pronunciation is so unusual, and they speak so quickly.

Sent to Moscow

First published in 1929

"Proletarskaya Revolutsiya" No. 11

Printed from the manuscript